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April Fools Day may be our track day for those fools with non Lotus cars!  By the time this goes out, or there abouts, we will have had our fun at Thunderhill!  Thanks John Z. for getting on the ball and putting this together so fast and well.  I'm writing this one week before our track day, and I'm still getting my cars ready.  I'm taking an 86 Turbo Esprit, the same one I took two years ago that needs some body work.  Since I'm still  waiting to fix the body and repaint it, I may as well put  a few more stone chips in it on the track.  The other car I'm taking puts me in the Fool category, but what the heck.  It will be my 75 Lamborghini Countach.  I have been using it for high speed rally events in Death Valley, Vegas, Montana, and in Nevada last year, but I decided to retire it from those events since I'm afraid my luck may run out driving a 26 year old car at 185 mph plus for up to thirty minutes at a time, so I'm going to repaint it and use it for less aggressive driving.  Plus Diablos are safer for that high speed driving.  But since I'm going to repaint it, may as well see how it will do on the track and put some stone chips in it also.  I think it will handle well, and it has gobs of horsepower so it will be fast, but the problem will be the gearing.  It has real tall gears, so I'll only be using first and second gears at the track, most probably.  And first will be a little slow getting out of the tight turns.  It goes 60 mph in first and 110 mph in

second, but it takes a while to get up there.  It weight the same as the Esprit, but I think the Esprit will be a lot quicker around the track even though it gives up almost 200 horsepower to the lambo.  We will see.

This economy sucks!  I just visited my friend Stuart at Boardwalk Lotus in Redwood City, and he told me they sold a record 16 new Esprits last year, but this year is starting off much slower.  He also told me about a young guy who bought a new Esprit last year and recently brought it back to trade in on a VW Jetta!  His stock portfolio, likc most of ours, tanked enough to change his choice of wheels.  You would think he would sell the house or kids or something before getting rid of the Lotus!  While I was there I checked out one of his customer's Elise 340 that was there for service.  I think they are real cool and I would love to get one of those.  Too bad they're not street legal, but oh well, some plates off a Europa would fit and most cops probably wouldn't know the difference.  Any of you that want to buy a new Lotus, make sure to visit Stuart (I told him I would plug him).

That's it.  See you guys at the track or at the meeting!


Victor